"Vous Encaissez, Nous Subissons"
also: fossil-fuel FUD masters, copter crashes, geeking out
PRESENTED BY SUPERPROFITS
VOUS ENCAISSEZ: Shell’s 2022 profits were $42.3 billion, twice its 2021 profits. Environmental law firm ClientEarth filed a climate lawsuit against Shell’s board at the high court of England and Wales this morning for “mismanaging climate risk, breaching company law by failing to implement an energy transition strategy that aligns with the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.”
France’s oil major TotalEnergies reported yesterday that it, too, doubled its profits in 2022 to $36.2 billion. In response, activists with Les Amis de la Terre (Friends of the Earth France) and Alternatiba splattered red paint on the entrance to TotalEnergies’ headquarters in the Paris suburb of La Defense. The activists held up the banner “SUPERPROFITS: VOUS ENCAISSEZ, NOUS SUBISSONS” (“You cash in, we suffer”).
NOUS SUBISSONS: Shah Meer Baloch in The Guardian checks in on how Pakistan is recovering from last year’s megaflood, which displaced millions. In many areas, the stagnant waters remain, and families are still hungry and homeless, abandoned in emergency tent cities.
“There is no food or help. We have been given no blankets. We’re having a harsh winter, and have been living in camps without any facilities. We are poor. We can’t afford to rent another home, otherwise we could have done it to leave this humiliating life.”
Banks and countries, mostly from the Arabic world, have pledged almost $10 billion in aid to Pakistan.
FUDDY DUDDIES: Distilled’s Michael Thomas introduces us to renewable-project killer Kevon Martis:
A clean energy executive told HEATED and Distilled that if Martis gets to a community before them, their projects are almost certain to be blocked by the local government. The executive asked for anonymity in fear of being targeted by Martis.
As the Checks and Balances Project wrote in 2018, Martis is a coal-backed climate denier who likes to harrass climate scientists.
Anna Phillips has a great story about the fossil-fuel industry’s failure to fight Maine’s embrace of electric heat pumps:
Funded by a heating oil industry group, the “Fuel Your Love” promotional campaign has a feel-good touch, but it directs viewers to a website dispensing home heating advice that is peppered with overwhelmingly negative, and sometimes misleading, claims about electric-powered heat pumps, saying they “are simply not ideal for climates like ours.”
The message doesn’t seem to be working. Mainers are embracing heat pumps — boxy machines that function like reverse air conditioners, combining heating and cooling systems in a single unit. In a state where winter is long and chilling, and exorbitant oil and gas prices have motivated people to switch, crews have installed tens of thousands of heat pumps, prompting the fossil fuel industry to step up its efforts to beat back the trend.
The National Oilheat Research Alliance and Propane Education and Research Council are very sad their FUD campaigns are failing. “The ‘electrify everything’ movement is moving forward across the Northeast and in other parts of the country with a vengeance,” Rich Carrione of the heating-oil public relations firm Warm Thoughts (get it?) bemoaned.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) held a hearing this morning with the governors of the five major U.S. territories. Although he and ranking member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) were more interested in talking about War With China than fossil-fueled cyclones, rising sea levels, and climate justice, there are a few climate hawks on the committee.
This afternoon, some fun for Hill climate hawks: the Environmental and Energy Study Institute is holding its first Congressional Climate Camp seminar on public polling on climate change—you can attend in person or virtually.
Leaking methane from offshore-drilling platforms is causing helicopter crashes, but “no federal agency currently oversees the safety of helicopters traveling to and from oil platforms, and workers who die in helicopter crashes are not counted in offshore incident statistics.”
Vice President Kamala Harris is a “water-policy geek.” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is a battery-subsidy geek.
Cancer Alley is real. Half the wetlands in Europe have been lost. “It seems like the world is getting more and more grim every day.”
Hearings on the Hill:
10 AM: Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Expenditure Authorization and Committee Rule Change, followed by
The state of the U.S. Territories
Climate Action Today:
2 PM: Environmental and Energy Study Institute
Congressional Climate Camp: Public Polling on Climate Change
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